Middleboro Cobras eye return to the top of the EFL

The Cobras finished 5-5 last season after winning two straight league championships.

Ken LechtanskiENTERPRISE CORRESPONDENT

MIDDLEBORO – There is only one word to describe Chris Pabst’s first season on the sidelines for the Middleboro Cobras last year. Snakebitten.

After suiting up for 18 seasons in the defensive secondary of the Eastern Football League and serving 15 seasons as a Middleboro team captain, Pabst is preparing for his second season as the Cobras head coach, looking to build on a 2013 campaign that had more downs than ups, but which still finished with the Cobras back in the postseason.

A former Taunton High assistant football coach, Pabst was given the reins of Middleboro’s juggernaut program by team owner Garrett Perry when Dave Goldman stepped down after winning back-to-back EFL championships.

“He liked my leadership qualities,” the Taunton native said of Perry’s decision. “It took me a couple weeks to mull over it. I put a lot of years on the field, so I was thinking it’s kind of a way for me to stay with football.”

By the middle of the season, though, Pabst might have been wondering if he had already overstayed his coaching welcome.

Sporting a roster full of new faces, the Cobras were missing four familiar ones who had decided to retire before the season, including 14-year veteran quarterback John Speidel.

Things went from bad to worse for Pabst as the Cobras were then decimated by a slew of midseason injuries, but Middleboro managed to still go 5-5 and finish just one game shy of reaching a third straight EFL title game, earning Pabst the honor of being named EFL Coach of the Year in his debut.

“Coaching my guys who I had been playing with for a long time, that was the hard part,” Pabst recalled at a recent team practice at Battis Field, “but after the first couple of games, we settled down as a team. Then we got an injury bug. We had a lot of adversity for a team that had a brand new coaching staff.”

As the Cobras gear up for their July 12 season opener at Charlestown, Pabst and his players are determined to regain the EFL championship trophy.

“You’re not going to win it every year,” Pabst said. “I think these guys realized the work they have to put in and really have stepped it up this offseason, hit the weight room, worked out on their own and got ready for this season because I think last year put a little bad taste in their mouth.

The Cobras have won 10 EFL championships, and would like nothing better than to win No. 11 for Pabst, who was a part of seven EFL Super Bowl champs as a 16-year league all-star.

While he hasn’t won the big one yet as a coach, he has won over his players, most of whom are his former teammates, including team captain Keilen McDonald, a 31-year-old linebacker from Brockton.

“For me, having played with coach Pabst, I have a great relationship with him so I tried my best to convey what he wanted to the team and help them get ready to the best that I could to help him out,” said the former Cardinal Spellman star who is in his seventh season with the Cobras. “I knew it was a hard adjustment for him, going from being a player right to a head coach.

“There was no assistant coach period, it was just, ‘Now that you’re given the franchise, what are you going to do with it?’

“It was a good experience, but a bad experience all at the same time,” he added. “You never want to go so far and then have it taken away from you but I think it will help us this year in that it was a good transition year for us.”

The Cobras’ other captains are relying on the experience that last year’s newcomers gained and on a strong crop of first-year players joining the team.

“It’s redemption, it’s kind of a statement season,” offensive guard and team captain Curt Pearson said. “There’s a lot to prove. We know that we’re always going to be the most hated (team) in the league and that everyone wants to beat us, but it’s supposed to be that way.

“For us veterans, it’s very personal, the whole season, and the young guys fall into place too because they feel the intensity of it, too.”

After winning two straight EFL crowns, the Cobras may have been lacking some of that intensity last season, according to veteran defensive lineman and captain Brian Berg of Pembroke, who is entering his sixth season with the Cobras and his 17th overall in the league.

“I think we’ll have a little bit better jell,” said Berg, a native of Braintree. “I don’t think we knew what to expect from each other last year and now we’ve got an idea of what they’re capable of and what’s expected here.

“Anytime you don’t win a championship in Middleboro, it’s a disappointment, no matter what,” he added. “We’re definitely motivated and have corrected some of the things that we should have done better last year.

“Maybe the drive wasn’t there for some guys. We had won a lot of championships and we had won back-to-back. The championship hangover didn’t happen because we won two in a row, but maybe after two, it did.”

Pearson agreed that any falloff in 2013 from the previous two seasons for the Cobras was because of the players and not the head coach.

“Pabst had the same leadership last year as he did as a player,” Pearson said. “It was just that everyone had to fall under the umbrella of him.”

Another of Pabst’s former longtime teammates who now calls him coach is team captain Lamont Penn, a running back from Brockton who once starred for the Boxers and is entering his seventh season with the Cobras.

Penn, agreed that Pabst’s leadership role as a coach last year was the same as it had been for his 18 seasons as a player.

“It wasn’t that much of a change, it was just different,” said Penn, who is making the switch to linebacker this season.

“We knew what to expect from coach Pabst, we knew what he wants as a player when we played with him. He came in and we started working hard, just like he told us we would.”

With his first season as a coach under his belt, Pabst enters his second season saying that things have gone pretty much as he expected when he took over.

“I had been on the team so long, so what I expected was the reality,” he said. “I wasn’t fooled by anything. It is men’s football and guys do have families and jobs.

“They’re going to miss stuff. The key to success is to try to keep them focused on the goal all the way through the season.”

Third-year defensive line coach Dan Edwards, who is from West Bridgewater but now lives in Brockton, played alongside Pabst for 12 years and is happy to be sharing the same sideline.

“He’s extremely knowledgeable about the game and of course, we’ve been good friends for a long time so it’s kind of like transitioning from us playing together to now we’re coaching together,” Edwards said.

“He brings the same fire and intensity to practice. He’s a heck of a coach.”

McDonald credits Pabst for the Cobras even making the playoffs last season despite their injuries.

“Everybody was trying, especially the veteran players, were trying to go above and beyond just because it was him,” McDonald said.

“He’s not just a regular guy, this is coach Pabst. You were trying to do the best you could, and just a little bit extra because you wanted to see him succeed.

“You don’t want to see anybody fail, especially him.”

A modest coach, Pabst is grateful for his players’ support, given that he was in their same shoes not all that long ago.

“I’ll give these guys a lot of credit, they give me a lot of respect and I do appreciate that,” Pabst said.

“I haven’t had any conflicts with any of the guys on the team. They respected me as a player and that translated to me as a coach.

“Some of them, it’s still hard for them to call me ‘Coach,’ but that’s fine with me. The guys are responding to what we’re doing.”

Buoyed by their offseason turnout of nearly 30 players for this season, the Cobras coach thinks his offense has the firepower that it was missing last season to make another EFL championship run.

“This year, we have big-time players on the outside and we can do both, we can run the ball and throw the ball when we need to,’’ he said. “That’s the difference between this year and last year.

“As a coach you can’t be stubborn,” he added. “Some coaches say, ‘We’re going to do it this way.’ You really can’t, you have to evolve with your team.”

With the Cobras poised to strike for another EFL title, anything short of a third championship in four years will be a disappointment to McDonald, especially with Pabst leading the way.

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